[SPOILERS]PB46: (In Search of) Fine Foreign Dining, by Hannibal of England

[Krill]

Joey, I ran through a sim to T40 yesterday. I can get warrior2 SE of the copper tile to fog bust the north (on copper tile on T41), and with some decent unit moves I can get warrior1 onto the flatland desert by the plains cow. By T40. That gives us total fog busting of the entire area north of the fish lake up to the coast. That means the scout we return with (Gilbert is the scout I think will return) we can push out ahead of the workers, and get the entire area around the plains sheep to the south fogbusted. This uses a mere 3 units, and we don’t need units in cities for happiness. OTOH, we will need units in cities to stop barbs from beelining the empty cities, but we should have the areas that barbs can spawn pushed out so far that we can get the granary chopped in city2, get the workboat out and get the extra warriors built that we need.



Looking at the map, the obvious place to place the next fogbuster would be somewhere in the fog west of copper, or 2E of the grass cow, adjacent to the wine. We only need 4 units to act as fog busters, from the south coast to the north. I’m wondering if we want to keep the second scout back temporarily in the north (ie turn it around and get it to return by T40). That way we could use Warrior2 to cover the copper area (it’s the closest area and we can only just get him there in time), Cavendish to cover the desert area (so he can explore north a little bit but then has to return, but he will be in position to restart scouting when we can replace him), warrior1 to cover the wines area (just move him along the hills to get into position) and Gilbert to cover the southern plains sheep area.



Theoretically, we can have the entire barb busting area covered on T40.

[Krill]

Two turn reports today, but no real good news. I played T25 in the early hours of hte morning, made a greedy move and paid for it.

Turn 025




Fucking lion.





Nothing much to say on demographics.


[Turn 026




FWIW, the odds of this happening or an even worse result were something like 3.5%, so this is pretty unlucky. OTOH, got decent rolls previously. The bear though, that's just bad luck. We're going to have to try and heal the scout on odd turns if the bear chases, but I think the smarter move is to move Cavendish underneath Gilbert, get a few turns healing in, then retreat to fog bust. That gives us a perfect barb-busting net come T40. I moved Cavendish NE - NW and risked moving next to another barb, but it's clear. World maps further down the post.

Gilbert moves NW - NW next turn, and I want to go bear hunting. We will get all of thee bubble of fog of war revealed with no difficulty, unless we get horrible barn animal combat roles.





Chop completed, Whip T28, warrior1 is 8/15.






World maps:

[Krill]

Regarding barb busting, here is teh basic layout for T39 and T41 (FWIW, T41 actually has some nuance not shown due to worker locations, so we can move Gilbert onto the plains hill forest 1SE to scout a bit of FoW without losing any coverage, but that risks walking into a barb warrior. We might be able to get Gilbert onto the plains hill 1SE of designated location on T39, but I'm not sure. Even then, we can't move further south until T41 so the barb warrior issue will always be present.

Turn 039:





Turn 041

[Krill]

Turn 027

Slight change of scouting plan due to the new barb busting dotmap.




Gilbert is going to rush to the tile 4S3W of his current location, as that looks to be a hill and uncovers the entirety of the FoW in that "patch". Gilbert will then move back to the plains hill SE of the plains cow, which he should reach on T32, which is the turn that warrior1 moves out of the capital. This ensures that warrior1 should not have to fight any barb animals whatsoever, so we are more secure in fulfilling the barb busting dot map. Cavendish will heal for a few more turns, and then move NE - E onto the grass hill, then move straight SE to the desert tile W of the plains cow for T40. This should ensure all FoW south of the single tile beneath the northern set of two adjacent peaks is revealed to us and also keeps Cavendish as safe as possible.





Still no religion founding. Or second cities.

[Krill]

Turn 028

Dot mapping is going to be awesome. Seriously glad we picked Fin, because it's nigh impossible to work anything but cottages due to the lack of food in the center of the continent.







Rusten was first to a second city on T28.


Turn 029

Still no religions being founded, but OH/Hitru were second to their second city on T29, and Rusten whipped himself back down to two size 1 cities. Obviously he has a plan, and I am waiting for him to found religion in his second city this turn. I don't see how he got to Pottery and BW by now, so the whip is probably a workboat. Don't see him pushing out a third worker at this point (and he really ought to have two workers already, if he has just whipped his second worker I'm unimpressed. Not denying he may be playing the best opening, just it makes this opening we have not seem quite so slow).




I want the bear to attack. I want to try and get a second scout to 4XP if we can. Next turn hoping to move the scout S - SE, but this all depends on how combat goes and lion moves. I double checked when we can move warrior1, it turns out it would not leave borders until T33, so we do have time to get the scout back over to ensure the warrior is safe (providing barbs don't get lucky). [Ignore the sign that says warriorT30, it's a typo, should be warrior T31, the granary completes eot30].





Behold what I truly believe will be the first granary built in this game.




Not certain, because I'm not tracking demos, but I think that the players with size 4 cities are 2MetraNinja, Commodore and an unknown third. Possible OH/Hitru but I doubt it.





Frankly, our demos suck, but we have whipped 2 pop points away as has Rusten. No one else has whipped, I doubt anyone else has revolted. Maybe OH/Hitru have done it when they have played a turn after I did, as it does not show in the demographics I have. None of this matters so far IMO, come back T50 to review.

[Krill]

I'll build another world map tomorrow (when T30 is played), as I plan to move Cavendish onto the grass hill next turn (he will be 63 health, so we need to start moving him back, and he should have good odds to survive a barb animal attack).

[Krill]

Turn 030

I FOUND A FOOD RESOURCE!

Admittedly, it's in a really awkward place to dot map, but it helps nail down everything else.




The bear got one hit in and died. I lost sigh of the lion, but it may well be 1N of TBW's scout.





Reminder to self: avoid growth next turn.








New world map with resources:





New dot map:




This is not final by any means, but cities 2-5 are pretty nailed down (even with the wheat location, if we move the city4 location we end up with a city that has absolutely zero food resources and can't even share. Given the use expected of city 2, we already know it can give the fish over. There is an argument for settling 1W of the silver though, but that enforces a city 1NW of the southern plains sheep and it has a knock on effect on coastal city locations).

[Krill]

Joey, I want to make a run at CoL through Maths and Currency. You up for that?

EDIT: To expand briefly, we finish Writing eot48-ish with a bit of gold in the bank. Capital borders expand eot49, which means copper city already has the outer ring copper inside cultural borders. At that point, 3 Math chops gives us ~42 hammers into a granary and a completed library in every city, and every single city I'm looking at outside the first 5 main land cities has outer ring food but inner ring forests.

Currency is obvious, with land just over from the capital, a Currency push really should put us towards the front of the tech race.

And then CoL gives us the potential for a religion, and court houses which we are going to need to prepare to triple whip in cities if we are looking at settling the western land bridge. If we can get there fast enough, we don't leave an opening for Praetorian, and I am not even sure one exists now anyway.

The main questions are surrounding Archery (more understandable T41 once we have horse locations) and Sailing (before or after Maths is the main question).

[GermanJoey]

Oh my god, I don't think I've ever been so happy to see a fucking dry corn.

[GermanJoey]

Math early seems good, and early Currency is always a good idea. What does CoL get us in the near-term, though? Will we really have the hammers to spare for courthouses so early, and will we really be able to expand fast enough to even need them? This is a Huge-size map, right?